From the CTS-V Driver’s Seat: Part I — The Brakes

By Ed

As I mentioned here previously our ride trips give us a lot of real-world experience in the CTS-V. I wanted to give you a bit more of a feel for what that is like. And, also, nobody outside our team has had a chance to drive this upcoming car. So I grabbed a video camera. In the coming days we’ll provide a lot of different clips attempting to provide a sense for what we’re doing on the road with the car. This first clip features John Heinricy explaining some of the aspects of the car’s ride and handling, particularly how the feel of the brakes was engineered.

John is my boss. But beyond that he’s an SCCA champion driver and one of the industry’s best-known performance experts, it’s fair to say. What some folks might not realize is John’s deep connection to Cadillac. He’s the owner of a vintage Cadillac, has contributed engineering work on many production Cadillac cars, and has periodically been a “guest driver” in the CTS-V race car in SPEED World Challenge professional races.

Anyhow, we taped this clip and a few others while in the midst of driving the CTS-V in Arizona recently.

Still Racing!

By Chris

One of the really nice things about CTS-V is that it has benefitted from a really good road racing program in recent years. Cadillac won two of the last three Manufacturer’s Championships in the SPEED World Challenge GT series. This is a terrific production-based road racing series operated by the SCCA, and it’s been a very good experience for Cadillac and helped influence and improve our “street” car quite a bit. The production CTS-V is of course on a one-year hiatus now as we prepare the all-new 2009 CTS-V that we’re working on now. Naturally, it was tempting for some to assume that this might mean the CTS-V would depart from racing. That is absolutely not the case – the CTS-V is back in SPEED World Challenge for 2008 under the management of the brand new Team Remington Cadillac.